In previous posts in this series, I have shared things I have already done with kids in my room. I thought it would be goos to share something that is in process in my room currently and two things that will be coming up soon.

For the last two years I have been inspired by the work of Katie DiCesare and others I know that have their kids "blog" on a regular basis, but incredibly frustrated with the fact that it is nearly impossible to blog without an app on iPads, I haven't really had the chance to explore blogging with my 4th graders. However, sometime in the fall, I discovered Kidblog made an arrangement with Wordpress so that you could link up a Kidblog accounts with the Wordpress app. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized that, yes indeed my students were going to start blogging.

About two weeks ago, I created our account and started to play with the app version of blogging. To be honest I had some difficulty with it. Primarly because blogging on an app does not have the same look or feel as using a web-based portal to blog. After I worked on figuring out what some of the issues for me were, I started looking for potential problems for the kids. Then on Tuesday, we as a class started "playing around" with the app. Not surprisingly, most of the kids had none of the issues I had. The class has no concept of what it would be like to blog without an app.

For our first "post" they are publishing the literary essays (a required form of writing in our district) As I write this most of the class is about halfway done with their revised version. Next week we are going to pause and revisit how we have been conferencing with each other on our writing, then we are going to work in small groups to post comments on each other's work. Before we do this I am planning to have a quick mini-lesson on thoughtful comments. I have already started collecting lots of examples of comments from this blog, other blogs I follow and from a list of great kid blogs that Katie references in her post I linked above.

I am intentionally slowing down on this work of commenting, because I want the kids in my room to see the power of what strong comments can do for a writer. I feel that using the mentor texts of both good and bad comments and encouraging the kids to think, "What would this do for me" or "What would this do to me" will be a powerful step in moving toward a place that when they start to comment on the blogs of their classmates we can get beyond, "Hey! You rock!"

Besides using the iPads to blog, I loaded two more free apps recently that will take me some time to find good mentor texts for the kids to use when we start to explore them. I have never tried podcasting with my class. I know that this can be a powerful tool to share thinking and ideas, but I couldn't quite figure out what to do with it. However, having the iPads has pushed me to jump in. The app audioBoo is a neat little recorder that instantly sends an audio file to the web. After playing around with this app at home for a while, I discovered that not only could you send a web-based link to share the podcast, but you can embed an audioBoo into a blog. I am thinking my class will love this. We will probably start slow, like maybe adding a few podcasts about what we have been doing to our class blog, but then build into what ever direction the class leads me. I am definitely excited about this tool and it's possibilities.

The second app we will be exploring is Show Me. Like audioBoo, this app uploads work to the web that can be embedded into a blog or shared with a link easily. The difference is that Show Me uploads a narrated video you make while using a whitboard like app on the iPad. I am still trying to figure out how to use this app, but one way could be to share thinking about diagrams or pictures. Here ia an example of a mentor text I might use if I go that route.

This work of creating digital texts can be very messy and it can be frustrating at times. I would not want to list all the times an idea didn't work out the way I thought it would. So the three things I shared in this post, our journey into blogging, podcasting and using ShowMe to create simple narrated screencasts could end up being a mess. However, I think that the risks of trying these new tools will be dwarfed by the reward of the kids being able to see or hear their work online and receive feedback from peers and family members about their work. It is important for children to see that their work can be viewed, appreciated and critiqued by a wider audience than their teacher and a select few others. It builds their self-efficacy as producers of content.

I am very fortunate to have iPads in my classroom. Getting these tools was some of the most challenging writing I have ever done. It is much easier to fly by the seat of my pants here than it is to write a grant. It has been fascinating watching the class use the iPads to create, explore, and play around with devices that almost seemed to be designed for kids. It is almost like anyone under the age of 15 was born with the genetic predispostion to inreact quickly and fearlessly with a touch screen.

One of the apps that I have on the iPads is Poem Flow. Sure some of the poems are well out of my reach, let alone the reach of my 4th grade students, but the app is free and it is fun. I really didn't think too much else about it. If one of the poems was appropriate for reading and thoughtful discussion we would look at together as a class. Sometimes the kids explore the app on their own during reading workshop time. The kids were captivated how the poem would slide in and out of the sreen, with words fading away only to be replaced by new words.

When we started a poetry exploration in depth that included writing our own poems, I overheard one of my kids say, "Wouldn't it be cool if we could make our poems flow." My first thought was, "Yeeesh, it can't that hard to do, why didn't I think of that." That night I started playing around with making a "Poem Flow" by using Keynote. All it took was some placement of the lines of my poem and the use of the "dissolve" transition. Well that and whole lot of debate about which background, font size, font color and where I wanted the lines of the poem to appear. But in all honesty that was big fun for me.

Note: Unfortunately, I don't think slideshare allows for the Keynotes below of my poem and Janice's poem allow for the transitions that can be seen if you "play the slideshow." So until I can find the time to convert these to movies and upload them to Vimeo, just pretend you can see the "flow" as your navigate the slideshare.

I knew that it would take about 10 minutes tops of instruction to show the kids how to build a project like I had done. So I added "build a "Poem Flow" as one of the publishing options for our poetry unit. Not every child did one, but the ones who did definitely enjoyed the process of manipulating their poem into a more movie like presentation. In the future, I would love to plan the time into the poetry unit for them to do a voice over and make their Poem Flows an actual short movie narrated by them.

When I think about the explosion of app publication that has happened in the last few years, I am sure the possibilities of using some of these as mentor texts for digital work are bountiful .

I think of some of the games that kids (and adults) ferociously play like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope and Doodle Jump. Imagine the possibilities if we look at these games as not games, but pathways to think about design and storytelling. Kevin wrote of this kind of thinking in one of his posts recently and I think looking at games as mentor texts is something we should deeply consider. There is a reason why I still spend too much time trying to get 3 stars on the current level of Angry Birds that I am stuck. Hopefully it is a bigger reason than my son was ahead of me the last time I checked.

I also think some of the productivity apps that are out there can also be examined for design purposes. I have just started playing around with Skitch. I still am not 100% certain how I will help my kids use it in the classroom or if we will use it. But what I do know is that you can create some artifacts that look remarkably interesting with it. The way Skitch allows you to annotate images, maps and webpages with a varitey of tools is fascinating to me.

When I think about the kids I serve, nearly all of them have access to some sort of iGadget or Android device that uses apps. The entrance into these apps is so easy and intuitive that if we start to look at them in terms of design and not just another game, notetaking tool, voice recorder, etc. we may find some ready made mentor text for our children to consider.

Later,

Tony

Late addition: As I was in the process of writing this post at various times today, Troy's post hit my twitter stream. I learned something new about the Poem Flow work we did. I can now sound super smart and call this project "genetic type" or "kinetic typography." I also learned that I might have hundreds of new mentor texts available to me, I just didn't know they were out there. I love it when something that emerges from the kids in my room actually has a intellectual sounding name. Maybe if I get observed during our poetry unit next year I can slide "kinectic typography" into my normally sketchy lesson plans. So thanks Troy, you made me tap my fingers and say "excellllent".

In my previous post on this theme, I wrote about using traditional books as possible mentor texts for digital compostition. Something else that I now frequently do to support my student learners happened due to one of those accidental AH-HA moments.

One of the great things about using tech tools to produce work is how ridiculously easy it is to change things, especially the appearance of the work. At one time I thought all of the messing around with background colors, fonts, placement of pictures, etc was a result of my students either a) trying to make up for the lack of writing with slick looking projects or b) a child just wasting time. My epiphany moment about the concept of playing around with how something looks happened when at the same time my class was busy on some project, I was busy on developing a slideshow for a presentation. If only my kids would have seen the crazy amount of time I changed background colors, fonts and placement of pictures.

One of the things we now do frequently in our digitial work is to "play" with how something looks when we are close to being done with a project. If the students in my classroom do not know how to take a screenshot, they quickly learn. I teach them this skill so they can more thoughtfully look at design elements near the end of a project.

During the last few class sessions we work on a project we take screenshots, then fiddle with the look, take screenshots, fiddle some more and look at all of these screenshots to best determine what design best suits our purpose. Often times this comparison of screenshots also includes the idea of going back to the "professional mentor texts" that may have inspired us in the first place.

Management of this type of work can be tricky at first because just like me, most kids will want to "play" first. They want to find the perfect look before doing the work of composing. I negotiate this with the class by stressing not worry too much about how it looks at the beginning, because the work of fine-tuning should be near the end. For example you are not really going to know how certain pictues will look on a certain background until the pictures are actually in the project. Another example would be you might think that Impact looks awesome. But will Impact really look awesome if it fills up the whole page?

In a way, I think that this revision of the look of the project, analyzing the different looks, and getting critical feedback from peers is a create-your-own-mentor-text situation. The kids are manipulating a tool to best send their composed message. They see what is possible happen with a few clicks, then build from this. Another thing I think starts to happen is they begin to notice how some things just don't work no matter how badly we may want them to work (e.g. orange type on a red background). So the next time they begin the process of digitally composing something, they already have built for themsleves some mentor texts of what can work well together. I will admit there are times that I might disagree with some of the choices from a strictly aesthetic sense, but I do honor the thinking and work that goes into the choices.

Below are some screenshots I collected from two years ago. This was a group project we did in science. The goal was to design a nonfiction text related to a weather concept. Some of the "professional mentor texts" used include Seymour Simon books, DK books, various web articles and several other weather related nonfiction books I pulled for this particular science unit.

I honestly can't remember where the group started, but what I do remember that they changed things up nearly a dozen times in one class period. They worked until they had something that a) got good feedback from some peers not in their group and b) they all could all agree that what they produced had a look that made them feel proud.

As you look at the various versions of a page from their book, try to imagine the conversation and thinking that went into it. Pesrsonally I really liked the third one down, but I valued the time taken to be reflective and to "play" hard to make a strong project. The entire final project is the last in line.

The idea of using mentor texts for helping writers is not new. In fact I think I have over 10 books in my professional library that espouse the virtues of using mentor texts. The struggle I have had over the last few years as I have tried to develop a more "digital writing workshop" is finding examples of quality writing that is published online that can be used as a mentor text to teach my 4th grade students.

Because of the myriad of what I would call "not-so-great-work" on the web, I have found myself starting my journey of helping students digitally compose by using great non-digital mentor texts to support the compostion of their work. Then trying to pick the correct tool to get there work online for a greater audience. Essentially, my goal is for the kids in my room to produce a valuable piece of writing that could be appreciated on piece of paper written in pencil first. Because if we can read a poem, story or essay written with traditional tools and say, "That is awesome" it will be even better if we can make it look good and publish it online.

I believe this is incredibly important. As teachers we can quickly become overwhelmed with the bells and whistles of various tools. I have fallen into this trap many times. I remember when Glogster was unleashed in my room a few years ago, I completely forgot to support quality writing and many of my students ended up with fantiscally awesome looking (or terribly awful looking) Glogs that served no purpose other than to potentially create a seizure for the reader trying to navigate the page. My thinking is that we don't need to Glog, Comic Life, Pixie or PowerPoint our classrooms to nth degree. What I think we should be doing is help our children stretch themselves as writers, then help the kids share this writing with a tool that makes sense.

Jeff Anderson's quote above that is so simple is also so powerful. I find the idea that texts are teachers can be both positive and negative. If we can put great models for the possibilites of writing into the hands of our children, then we can expect more positive results in terms of the quality of their writing. If we are short sighted in what models we use by focusing on the bells and whistles of the tool, then we can expect some great bells and whistles, but not-so-great-writing.

So when my class published their first work online this year, we started slow by look at one mentor text specifically for the idea of the project. Then the kids explored many other picture books and poetry books to look for ways to make their writing stronger and more vivid.

Our class project was tittled "The Best Part of Us." It is based on a fabulous picture book titled The Best Part of Me by Wendy Ewald. We read excerpts from this book. We looked closely at the photographs that accompanied the writing. Then using an brainstorming app called Popplet on our iPads we began to brainstorming possible "best parts" of us. After decisions were made, we we began drafted our short pieces of writing to describe these best parts, we went back to the original mentor text and review the pieces in that book. Then students began using a collection of picture books and poetry titles that I pulled that I felt the writing strongly emphasized descriptive details. Some of the class drafted in their writer's notebooks, but some of the class drafted on the Keynote app on their iPads. I chose Keynote as the tool for this project because I wanted the class to explore this incredibly useful tool. For those of you who are not in Mac school districts, Keynote is a lot like PowerPoint. I also chose Keynote because the goal of the project was to create a class "picture book" that could be easily shared online.

One of the key things the class learned throgh the process of building their Keynote slide was the idea of "just because you can do something with a dgital tool, doesn't mean you should do something." Through trial and error the students in my room changed the look of their Keynote by playing around with different backgrounds, text fonts and sizes and various other things that could increase the wow factor of their work. For the most part, what they realized is that the cool factor cannot overcome poor writing. This was something that I considered to be a big "win" for our room.

Below is the final product. It was posted on our class website to the delight of the class and their families. An interesting side note is that nearly every student wanted to go back on change something after seeing their classmates' work.

While some of the slides might not be great models of writing or design, I am sure the quality of the final product would have been significantly less if we hadn't used picture books and poems for mentor texts. If all we had done was go to Slideshare and check out some presentations that had been uploaded or just use Keynote as a tool to impress our audience with the wow factor, I don't think our writing would have been as strong.

"The Best Part of Us" is just one example of how I use non-digital mentor texts as the basis for creating digital texts. When I reflect on this journey I am on to encourage students to produce work that can be shared online I do think it seems a little odd that I may be spending more time with traditional mentor texts than digital ones. But I do think that starting with a great peice of writing as a mentor text, regardless of the format is really, really important.

The power in being able to produce work digitally can be huge for children. It allows them to understand that many, many people can read their work. It allows them to explore new tools to produce writing. It allows them to create pieces of work that have more polish then they could produce in more traditional ways. However, if our focus is on the "polish" and not the writing then what is the point of taking the time to produce these dgital texts?

12/22/2011

In an effort to become a little more routine about my writing in this space I am committing to a few new regular events as well as joining a group of friends for a weeklong event in January.

1) Inspired by Jen Vincent and Kellee Moye over at Teach Mentor Texts (who seem to have been inspired by Sheila at Book Journey) I will be posting a quick blurb about what I have been reading. The goal here is not necessarily to review the books and articles, but it will help me track my own reading. Hopefully it will also help me keep better track of what I am logging on my goodreads account. I have found that when I finish a book and I am not near a computer, I forget to update my goodreads accout. Who knows, maybe you might even choose to read something I listed.

2) Colby Sharp wrote a thoughtful piece on his blog about a month ago that caused me to reflect on my role as being "just a teacher." The tickles in the back of my brain from his post along with some interesting conversations with my principal, a very smart colleague from my school and a mentor on mine have made me wonder why I have tried so hard to be "under the radar" and not regularly share what is going on in my class room. The students who I work with are awesome, so starting tomorrow I will do a regular Friday post that highlights something one of my students accomplished that amazes me. Not sure how this will work, but "Stories from Room 226" is not meant to be selfish or showboating, I want these stories to honor students who have shown their love of learning.

3) In January I will be writing alongside some people who I admire greatly. Frank Sibberson got the ball rolling on making me think about the use of mentor text with students who are composing digital works. I think she is onto to something really big. If we are wanting our students to produce authentic work that can be shared on the web, then we probably be thinking deeply about models that will inspire quality work. It will be exciting to learn from Bill Bass, Katie DiCesare, Troy Hicks, Kevin Hodgson and Franki. It will also be a little nerve-wrecking to read their "stuff", then go back and read my "stuff" and think "Man, I should have said that!"

Hopefully, openly broadcasting that I will be writing more regularly will hold me accountable to develop a more consistent habit of actually ... writing.